Beyond being an outstanding public speaker, the reasons Sarah Palin poses such a threat to the left and the elitists are her authenticity and her clarity of expression on religion, morality and political philosophy. It is almost an hour time commitment to watch the entire appearance but it is worth it if you want to understand her current appeal.

Sarah is Everywoman. She can talk about her faith without a hint of contrivance, and she tells the stories of the remarkable events in her life in terms that resonate with all of us. The real Sarah Palin is very hard not to like. That is why they are so afraid of her.

David Letterman used his June 10 “Late Night” program to confront the daughter-raping issue head on.

Insisting that when he talks about daughters being raped, “Late Night” host David Letterman said on his June 10 broadcast that “I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl” and noted that when he spoke of Sarah Palin’s daughter being raped, he was referring to the 18 year-old, not the 14 year-old.

Nipping the recent controversy in the bud, Letterman went on to declare “you can rest assured, all of your daughters under the age of 15 are perfectly safe around me.”

Not one to avoid controversy for long, Alaska Governor and former Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is back in the news for an interview she gave at a location that was possibly not thoroughly vetted by her public relations staff.

As Palin nonchalantly fielded questions from reporters in an ad hoc press opportunity on the occasion of her annual “pardoning” of a turkey for the upcoming Thanksgiving Day holiday, both the television cameras and audience noticed something terrible occurring in the background as the governor blithely continued the back and forth with the press.
Just outside the governor’s field of vision but completely observable by everyone else, an apparently crazed political candidate from Minnesota was crushing small dogs one after the other, saying “THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win. THIS is how we win.”

During the course of the nearly 10-minute interview, an estimated 17 small dogs were either suffocated, or mortally wounded from massive blunt force trauma.

Confronted with the video evidence, neither the governor nor her staff would comment on yet another major miscalculation by the woman who would have been next in line for the presidency of the United States of America.

[Scroll down - links to the NBC video clips of Sarah Palin on SNL are at the bottom of this post.]

Anybody else watching this?

She was pretty good in the opening “skit” – not much of a skit, but some humorous banter with Lorne Michael and Alec Baldwin (said “Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother”).

Not sure if that’s it or what, but more power to her for doing it.

UPDATE: Boy, it is going to be a little painful having to watch all the non-Palin skits in the meantime. Maybe it’s like that philosopher dude once speculated about music – that eventually all the possible melodies would be used and that would be it: Maybe all the jokes have already been written, and there is nothing left for SNL to do but play out the string. At 11:45 pm this is some unfunny stuff going on here in this first sketch and it is supposed to be the good material at the beginning, right?

UPDATE II: The real VW and Burger King commercials are FAR more entertaining than the SNL “MacGruber” McGyver parody. Lorne Michael should go to Madison Ave and hire some writers.

UPDATE III: 11:56 pm – Maybe no more Palin? The Suze Orman sketch was lame. I’m gonna surf the Web while this is on because this is one upcoming hour of life I know I won’t get back.

UPDATE IV: Elsewhere, African Press International says the Michelle Obama story will be updated tomorrow. This could be big news. Michelle apparently called in to complain about something and let slip that Barack Obama was adopted by a foreign national after he was born, and thus was not a U.S. citizen. Supposedly API is going to release the audio of the phone call from Michelle Obama, a phone call the Obama campaign reportedly says never took place.

UPDATE V: Powerline was worried the Palin appearance would be like going into the lion’s den but if that at the beginning was it, no harm done to her and she performed fine, certainly reminded why people love her. And a nice counterpoint to the Tina Fey impersonation version of herself which was playing at the same time. Made Fey’s look pretty insipid. But all in good fun.

UPDATE VI: She’s back, on Weekend Update. “I’m not gonna do the piece we rehearsed … I think it just might cross the line.” A rap. Sarah is playing along … heh. This is pretty funny actually.

UPDATE VII: Man, Sarah Palin is a natural in front of the camera. No wonder she strikes such apocalyptic fear in the hearts of her opponents. I know I speak for all of America when I say: We want to see more Sarah Palin!

UPDATE VIII: Whoa. Barack Obama and Bill Ayers shared an office for three years. That does not seem like it’s made it into the narrative yet; it will be interesting to see how this will update the “when I was 8 years old” data point, you know, the one where Barack Obama knows practically nothing about Bill Ayers.

UPDATE IX: NBC says the video of Sara Palin’s appearances will be up on their Web site, not there yet though. Here’s a snippet of the first portion on youtube. (May not be there long … copyright issues).

UPDATE X: Sarah came out for the farewell from the stage, about 15 seconds. Tina Fey did not appear to be out there.